I love cooking and I love people loving my cooking. However, I don’t like getting told what to do for long term, so working in a kitchen or restaurant is probably a bad position for me. I’ve given years of thinking about working or running a food truck with a rotating menu. It’d be cool to travel around and see different people a day enjoying my different dishes, but I’ve never actually heard the everyday ins-and-outs of working in a food truck. What are some experiences (good or bad) working in a food truck that you could share?
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90% of your time will be spent dealing with the business, 10% of it will be cooking.
Don’t turn your hobby into your business.
I like ski and golf, so I work part of the year in ski and the other in golf. I hardly practiced either last year. Listen to this person.
I’m nowhere near the business of foodtrucks so obviously take this with an extremely tiny grain of salt, but I think you’ll have better chances sticking to one area and a standard (non rotating) menu. Sticking in one area - because it’s easier to get regulars and free word-of-mouth marketing if they know you’ll still be there next week. Standard menu - because it might be a turn-off for people to love their first time only to come back and not have what they liked available. You can probably rotate specials, but having a standard base menu will help keep your regulars.
That and a rotating menu likely adds overhead costs as it prevents you from specializing (skills, equipment, and ingredients acquisition)
I don’t know about food trucks in particular, but I recall reading that restauranteering is a very competitive business, that the average lifetime of a restaurant is something like four years.
kagis
This says five years:
https://www.perrygroup.com/foodservice-expert-overview-on-how-long-restaurants-last/
Of those restaurants and foodservice businesses that made it beyond a year, 70% failed within the next 3 to 5 years. Of those that made it beyond then, 90% remained successful and stayed in business longer than 10 years. There is a more recent article this week in The News Press that reports similar results that our foodservice expert report concluded more than a dozen years ago. This excerpt, along with the full story, shows times have not really changed that much as a restaurant management consultant and what you can learn from these Florida restaurateurs: “According to therestaurantbrokers.com, the average restaurant’s life span is five years with up to 90 percent of independently owned restaurants closing in year one.
Holy fuck. No bueno. So you’re saying it’s not a long term career?
Food trucks are wildly different businesses then actual brick and mortar restaurants
That’s why I’m asking. I’m not able to cooperate with restaurants for very long. And this coming from experience, but my wife and I have discussed different options like a food truck
What are the numbers for other startups? As far as I recall, the numbers for non-food businesses are in the same ball park. I.e. founding a successful company is difficult.
It’s hot as balls.
Make sure you know what it costs to get your truck inspected by the health inspector and what it takes to get yourself licensed to serve out of it - it can add to your startup costs quite a bit. Research your local laws as well, some cities have some pretty hostile laws/regs for food trucks. If you want you go a county over, you’ll likely need new licensing and more $$$.
Also, no offense meant but if you don’t have at least a few years of experience in a legit commercial / restaurant kitchen, you need that first IMHO. Cooking consistently at the scale that restaurants require is legitimately hard and is a skill that needs honing. Best to do that on a business’s dime.
I am like you, and love the idea of starting up a food truck business. I wouldn’t do it unless I was already wealthy enough to just pour money into it, hire people to deal with the admin, and leave me the fuck alone to cook.
I ran my own (non food) business for a decade. My experience is anecdotal. I don’t pretend I reflect the reality of running your own business, but it fucking sucked.
I spent so much fucking time on admin. I worked 80+ hour weeks, for what amounted to less than minimum wage. After a decade I burnt out and shut it down and now I work a dumb job that I give no fucks about and cook at home with my wife for us and for friends for the sheer pleasure of it.
Edit: my business was based on something I loved to do, and I hated all of the “business” parts of the business.
